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Monday, December 1, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
If the USA was Nigeria
You would think Obama is a Nigerian the way people here are talking about him, supporting him. One newspaper writes "the man who could be king" and probably wishes Nigeria had such a politician to vote for. Then again, as a popular mail sent around Nigeria these days says, if the USA was Nigeria, today's papers Headlines would read something’s like:
*Don't celebrate yet, McCain tells Obama *(TELL magazine)
*Concede defeat, Obama urges McCain *(Punch newspaper)
*20 opposition cadres riot* (The Sun newspaper)
*McCain Demands Vote Recount* (Vanguard newspaper)
*Elections rigged* (Guidian newspaper)
*No evidence of manipulation* (NTA news)
*The Church declares elections free and fair* (News Line)
*There will be violence if we lose; McCain declares* (LTV 8 news)
*Election results for Arizona awaited* (Channels news)
*Trucks with suspected ballot papers crosses into USA from Mexico* (Tribune newspaper)
*McCain is an opportunist - Go back to your farm* (AIT news)
*I will not accept results, McCain tells Obama *(STV news)
*Don't celebrate yet, McCain tells Obama *(TELL magazine)
*Concede defeat, Obama urges McCain *(Punch newspaper)
*20 opposition cadres riot* (The Sun newspaper)
*McCain Demands Vote Recount* (Vanguard newspaper)
*Elections rigged* (Guidian newspaper)
*No evidence of manipulation* (NTA news)
*The Church declares elections free and fair* (News Line)
*There will be violence if we lose; McCain declares* (LTV 8 news)
*Election results for Arizona awaited* (Channels news)
*Trucks with suspected ballot papers crosses into USA from Mexico* (Tribune newspaper)
*McCain is an opportunist - Go back to your farm* (AIT news)
*I will not accept results, McCain tells Obama *(STV news)
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
My compound -the imperfect village
When people ask me about my life in Nigeria and ask me about the people in my life, normally my neighbours in the compound are overlooked. I get intimate questions about the men in my life, but we never discuss that I have seen most of my neighbours in some undressed state or another. When we discuss how lively my life is here, I often don’t mention that the fights in my compound can be so entertaining that I would switch off my music just to hear every word. And when we discuss tribes and politics, I forget to mention that my compound only hosts northerners.
I live in a massive mansion together with 12 others. My 1-bedroom apartment is one of the smaller ones, which gives you an indication of how big the place is. The house was intended for 1 family but when they finally finished the building the children had all moved out already. For 8 years the house was just standing there, soaking up rain water with its cement walls, until about 1 year ago they decided to create 12 apartments to rent out and I am among the first to have moved in.
It is a truly Nigerian compound. This is not because my Tanzanian neighbour and myself are the only non-Nigerians, but because everything has been done with an astounding lack of perfection. Everything is there alright, but... E.g. it has taken 3 months to have the lights and sockets work at the same time, 2 months to pave the compound, and about 5 months for my walls to start falling apart due to the lack of drainage systems. Bathrooms tend to slope in the wrong way and the water problems have led to mouldy walls (and clothes). If it rains the water tends to enter through the windows and the mosquitoes can easily feed themselves on us unprotected humans.
The tiny parking space creates most entertainment though. The 12 cars are crammed inside, nearly spilling out of the gate, and everyone knows when the others are coming and going so that we have created a near-perfect sequence of parking our cars. If you want to leave earlier than normal, you will have to ask the gate men to wake up your neighbours so they can move their cars. This is why I’ve seen so many of my neighbours half-naked. On a few occasions I have heard impressive fights between my neighbours on the speed with which cars are moved, or on the position of the particular car. But like always in Nigeria fights are quickly forgotten and laughter follows suit.
Help is always offered by the gate people. It used to be one gate man from Niger Republic, but there seems to be an exponential growth in gate men. Not one of them speaks English and my Hausa is far from perfect, but you can get far with “moto” and a lot of gestures. When you come to visit me they first tell you that I’m not there unless you just refer to me as “the white one”, and when it’s a man visiting me they’ll act as my protectors and will not let you in unless I have consented. They are like my brothers, taking care of me, and in the 6 months that they have the key to my house, I have felt safe and looked after rather than paranoid on when they’ll steal my belongings.
All my life I have thought of a village as the worst place to live. The social control, the tight regulations and the constant intrusion of neighbours seemed like hell to me. Now I live in a compound where you can be yourself, fight like family, barge in on each other, talk without regard of social position, and walk around in your house dress. Inside our walls we have a village of our own –and I love it!
I live in a massive mansion together with 12 others. My 1-bedroom apartment is one of the smaller ones, which gives you an indication of how big the place is. The house was intended for 1 family but when they finally finished the building the children had all moved out already. For 8 years the house was just standing there, soaking up rain water with its cement walls, until about 1 year ago they decided to create 12 apartments to rent out and I am among the first to have moved in.
It is a truly Nigerian compound. This is not because my Tanzanian neighbour and myself are the only non-Nigerians, but because everything has been done with an astounding lack of perfection. Everything is there alright, but... E.g. it has taken 3 months to have the lights and sockets work at the same time, 2 months to pave the compound, and about 5 months for my walls to start falling apart due to the lack of drainage systems. Bathrooms tend to slope in the wrong way and the water problems have led to mouldy walls (and clothes). If it rains the water tends to enter through the windows and the mosquitoes can easily feed themselves on us unprotected humans.
The tiny parking space creates most entertainment though. The 12 cars are crammed inside, nearly spilling out of the gate, and everyone knows when the others are coming and going so that we have created a near-perfect sequence of parking our cars. If you want to leave earlier than normal, you will have to ask the gate men to wake up your neighbours so they can move their cars. This is why I’ve seen so many of my neighbours half-naked. On a few occasions I have heard impressive fights between my neighbours on the speed with which cars are moved, or on the position of the particular car. But like always in Nigeria fights are quickly forgotten and laughter follows suit.
Help is always offered by the gate people. It used to be one gate man from Niger Republic, but there seems to be an exponential growth in gate men. Not one of them speaks English and my Hausa is far from perfect, but you can get far with “moto” and a lot of gestures. When you come to visit me they first tell you that I’m not there unless you just refer to me as “the white one”, and when it’s a man visiting me they’ll act as my protectors and will not let you in unless I have consented. They are like my brothers, taking care of me, and in the 6 months that they have the key to my house, I have felt safe and looked after rather than paranoid on when they’ll steal my belongings.
All my life I have thought of a village as the worst place to live. The social control, the tight regulations and the constant intrusion of neighbours seemed like hell to me. Now I live in a compound where you can be yourself, fight like family, barge in on each other, talk without regard of social position, and walk around in your house dress. Inside our walls we have a village of our own –and I love it!
Reading the news
“I wonder why people are so wicked. You just wake-up in the morning to find your house entrance with heaps of feaces and nobody seems to care enough to take drastic action”. In another article I read the sentence “with various water sports like swimming, volleyball and table tennis the guests are thus profitably engaged”. Ever tried table tennis in water? Well, at least there’s no false pretence as to the goal of having guests: profit... The same newspaper compared some kind of manufacturing activity to a termite colony and then devoted a third of the article on explaining the workings of a termite colony... Educational no doubt, but I quite lost the lineof the argument.
Reading newspapers here regularly has me in stiches but it’s also often difficult to understand the articles. A sentence starting with “however” can serve to simply confirm the previous statement and you often feel like keeping your breath until the clue comes, only to find out that the clue consisted of an endless repetition of the same argument. Oh, and of course there’s the emphasis on describing the unimaginable greatness of the people interviewed, an emphasis lost in hilarious details.
Photos next to articles normally refer to another event or article, of some days ago. They don’t therefore offer more clarification, but they do make you laugh as photographers won’t ask their victims to pose but just ‘snap’ them at a random point of time. The facial expressions are often embarassing, and a story in itself.
Every topic is touched upon. From corruption to fashion, from political intrigues to magical witch doctors, from the financial crisis to the nearness of God. Having to read newspapers for my job has become an entertaining (though time-consuming) business, and I totally see how journalism can be called an art.
Reading newspapers here regularly has me in stiches but it’s also often difficult to understand the articles. A sentence starting with “however” can serve to simply confirm the previous statement and you often feel like keeping your breath until the clue comes, only to find out that the clue consisted of an endless repetition of the same argument. Oh, and of course there’s the emphasis on describing the unimaginable greatness of the people interviewed, an emphasis lost in hilarious details.
Photos next to articles normally refer to another event or article, of some days ago. They don’t therefore offer more clarification, but they do make you laugh as photographers won’t ask their victims to pose but just ‘snap’ them at a random point of time. The facial expressions are often embarassing, and a story in itself.
Every topic is touched upon. From corruption to fashion, from political intrigues to magical witch doctors, from the financial crisis to the nearness of God. Having to read newspapers for my job has become an entertaining (though time-consuming) business, and I totally see how journalism can be called an art.
Friday, October 10, 2008
How to drive in Nigeria
I drive around every day and enjoy it –and thank whoever’s up there for each day without an accident. Accidents happen here. A lot. That you can buy a driving license for about 25 euro doesn’t help of course… You don’t really need to know how to drive though. These are some of the general rules:
- The claxon is the voice of your car. And since you live in the land of the loud people, you use it to express everything from mild annoyance to sheer brutality.
- Driving is like skiing: the one coming up from the back is the one who watches out what you are doing and who will stop when you make a funny move. Ideally.
- Drive very close to the other cars. Others can’t see your indication lights anymore? No problem, use your hand to indicate your direction.
- Overtaking is possible always. Also when you can’t see the road ahead, when you are on a small 2-lane road, or when you drive ridiculously fast within a village. Use the claxon and hope everything you could collide with will back off.
- The break is your best friend. Servicing your car to make sure everything works, is a luxury though.
- You can make any move you want. The more difficult it becomes for others to anticipate your moves, the better. A possible accident will be their fault, not yours.
- Majority voting applies: if enough people think there’s a lane, then there is a lane. Five lanes can be created on a 3-lane road.
- Drive as fast as your car can take you. Depending on the state of the car that could be 50 on a highway or 160 when going through a little town.
- You don’t put on your lights until it’s pitch dark. Once you do put them on, you put them on their brightest. No use having lights if you can’t blind other people with them.
- Survival of the fittest: bigger cars have right of way.
- If there is a bend in the road with 2 lanes, you will use both lanes and keep switching between them, thus preventing people to pass (and thereby causing even more go slow)
- Should there be an interesting person of the opposite sex in a car nearby you can start flirting, in which case it’s permitted to forget about the rest of traffic.
- If you want to cross a very busy junction, you move slowly but steadily ahead so as to block the road. If a deadlock doesn’t occur, you can pass. Alternatively, you will end up spending many minutes using your claxon and shouting at other people to move.
- If rain falls, you forget how to drive altogether.
Some people say Nigeria is a dangerous country. They say that you’ll be lucky to get away unscathed by kidnappers or armed robbers, without falling victim to malaria, or without hypertension complaints due to overall chaos and corruption. When people hear I live in Nigeria the common question to ask is “isn’t that very dangerous?!”. Nobody wants to come to Nigeria out of fear, while people get crushed in a stampede towards South-Africa –a country far more dangerous than Nigeria. Still, when I think of the way Nigerians drive, my confidence about the safety of the country does falter a bit…
- The claxon is the voice of your car. And since you live in the land of the loud people, you use it to express everything from mild annoyance to sheer brutality.
- Driving is like skiing: the one coming up from the back is the one who watches out what you are doing and who will stop when you make a funny move. Ideally.
- Drive very close to the other cars. Others can’t see your indication lights anymore? No problem, use your hand to indicate your direction.
- Overtaking is possible always. Also when you can’t see the road ahead, when you are on a small 2-lane road, or when you drive ridiculously fast within a village. Use the claxon and hope everything you could collide with will back off.
- The break is your best friend. Servicing your car to make sure everything works, is a luxury though.
- You can make any move you want. The more difficult it becomes for others to anticipate your moves, the better. A possible accident will be their fault, not yours.
- Majority voting applies: if enough people think there’s a lane, then there is a lane. Five lanes can be created on a 3-lane road.
- Drive as fast as your car can take you. Depending on the state of the car that could be 50 on a highway or 160 when going through a little town.
- You don’t put on your lights until it’s pitch dark. Once you do put them on, you put them on their brightest. No use having lights if you can’t blind other people with them.
- Survival of the fittest: bigger cars have right of way.
- If there is a bend in the road with 2 lanes, you will use both lanes and keep switching between them, thus preventing people to pass (and thereby causing even more go slow)
- Should there be an interesting person of the opposite sex in a car nearby you can start flirting, in which case it’s permitted to forget about the rest of traffic.
- If you want to cross a very busy junction, you move slowly but steadily ahead so as to block the road. If a deadlock doesn’t occur, you can pass. Alternatively, you will end up spending many minutes using your claxon and shouting at other people to move.
- If rain falls, you forget how to drive altogether.
Some people say Nigeria is a dangerous country. They say that you’ll be lucky to get away unscathed by kidnappers or armed robbers, without falling victim to malaria, or without hypertension complaints due to overall chaos and corruption. When people hear I live in Nigeria the common question to ask is “isn’t that very dangerous?!”. Nobody wants to come to Nigeria out of fear, while people get crushed in a stampede towards South-Africa –a country far more dangerous than Nigeria. Still, when I think of the way Nigerians drive, my confidence about the safety of the country does falter a bit…
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
2 years
2 years in madness. 2 years of giving up comfort and money only to end up as a much richer person. 2 years of freedom and human warmth. 2 years of discovering, laughing, sensing, crying, of growing. 2 years of frustration, of fun. 2 years of adventure.
2 years in a country misunderstood and especially undervalued by almost the entire world. And as someone told me this weekend: “I’m happy nobody knows how fantastic this place is, how warm its people. It makes me feel very privileged.”
Today I’m celebrating 2 years in Naija.
2 years in a country misunderstood and especially undervalued by almost the entire world. And as someone told me this weekend: “I’m happy nobody knows how fantastic this place is, how warm its people. It makes me feel very privileged.”
Today I’m celebrating 2 years in Naija.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Coping with constant light
I have had constant light for over a week now. This has been an absolute first for me in Nigeria, and even though I started off being terribly happy about all the light, by now I realize it is a dangerous situation…
First of all, I’m getting used to the light. I plan my days thinking “I’ll have light tonight” which is a dangerous development. It creates dependency on the most unreliable of factors, just because it seems reliable for now. I don’t carry my phone charger with me anymore, thinking I can simply charge it at home. I let the battery of my laptop go empty without any fear, and buy things that can only stay well in a fridge. Slowly I’m losing my coping mechanisms for when light eventually goes. And eventually it will of course.
Then the second development is that I’m becoming paranoid. I mean, it just can’t be normal that I’ve had light for over a week, so what is going on? Has somebody simply forgotten about the switch for my area? Perhaps my compound is part of a secret science project to study the effect of constant electricity supply on the human brain? Possibly my new neighbour has blackmailed the NEPA officials? Or perhaps it’s the last treat we humans get before Armageddon…
I started off being happy, but this unusual situation has made me a gibbering wreck with only one thought on my mind: when will they take away the light from us again?
First of all, I’m getting used to the light. I plan my days thinking “I’ll have light tonight” which is a dangerous development. It creates dependency on the most unreliable of factors, just because it seems reliable for now. I don’t carry my phone charger with me anymore, thinking I can simply charge it at home. I let the battery of my laptop go empty without any fear, and buy things that can only stay well in a fridge. Slowly I’m losing my coping mechanisms for when light eventually goes. And eventually it will of course.
Then the second development is that I’m becoming paranoid. I mean, it just can’t be normal that I’ve had light for over a week, so what is going on? Has somebody simply forgotten about the switch for my area? Perhaps my compound is part of a secret science project to study the effect of constant electricity supply on the human brain? Possibly my new neighbour has blackmailed the NEPA officials? Or perhaps it’s the last treat we humans get before Armageddon…
I started off being happy, but this unusual situation has made me a gibbering wreck with only one thought on my mind: when will they take away the light from us again?
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